9 ms·

Kits Make Tinkerers’ Home-Automation Dreams Come True

46 points by fawce 11y ago

eveningcoffee 11y ago
I am pretty sure that people actually want network connected hardware instead of Internet-connected hardware. And perhaps they also want a way to access their hardware in their home network in a secure and private way.
- StavrosK 11y ago
  Exactly. I've been thinking about a way to do this (it's pretty much just devices generating ECC keys and exchanging them with each other while pairing, along with AES keys). Afterwards, communicating through MQTT is easy, even if the server is public. Maybe I should write up an initial version in Python, although it wouldn't run on embedded devices. It would at least be a good prototype.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    It would run on a Pi/BBB.
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      It would, that's partly why I started it yesterday. So far, I'm thinking about what features it should support, but it will be at https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone.
  - hwstar 11y ago
    MQTT is great on an internal LAN for controlling small devices based on say the ESP8266, but I wouldn't trust it over the public Internet unless it is VPN'd. What's needed is a new protocol you can use between your phone or tablet which is websockets-based and can use HTTPS to talk to either node.js or something similar. This protocol could also convey graphing data and GUI building blocks to your phone or tablet. BTW: I have several ESP8266 building blocks on my Github site https://github.com/hwstar https://github.com/hwstar with are home automation related. These include AC control, AC energy measurement, and DC voltage and current measurement. I'm not a GUI/android/ios programmer, but would like to work on open source software with someone who is.
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      Why websockets and HTTPS? That's way too heavy for embedded devices, and why do you care what the transport is if the messages themselves are encrypted and authenticated? If you want to take a look at what I'm building, I'll publish it at https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone when I have some code.
      - hwstar 11y ago
        You are correct. If the transport is secure, then the protocol doesn't matter. I just think that a central controller model could use a protocol which is more suited to keeping the code on the mobile device as simple as possible. If you just want to send MQTT commands to nodes without a central controller, then what you propose makes sense.
        StavrosK 11y ago
        The problem is that TLS is far from "as simple as possible", and you need TLS on the device in order to have encrypted communications just device-to-server. In my opinion, device-to-device encryption is much better, and you don't need all the overhead of TLS. I've actually finished a first draft of the prototype and am looking for people to kick the tires and discuss it. Would you be interested?
        hwstar 11y ago
        If you make it open to everyone, I'll take a look. Post the code on Github and document what it does in the README.md file.
        StavrosK 11y ago
        Done.
        hwstar 11y ago
- bardworx 11y ago
  I agree with you but the regular consumer doesn't know the difference between LAN or WAN, nor what a VPN or SSH are. They just want it to work, and that's difficult to achieve unless you are proficient with basic networking concepts. For the tinkerer or early adapter, there are steps in the right direction. For the "everyday" person, this tech is still a few years away, in my opinion.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Maybe our continued repetition that "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference..." is why "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference".
    - bardworx 11y ago
      > Maybe our continued repetition that "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference..." is why "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference". I've worked helpdesk for users and being exposed to regular, everyday, computer users I can attest that the consumer doesn't know the difference because they don't care enough to learn. One of my first questions was: "Did you try pressing the power button?" I would get silence....then a quick "Thank You" ... then a dead line. Another anecdote: My mother is a programmer (DB2, Cobol, SQL) for a financial institution. She is of middle class in NYC and educated. She still uses an iPhone 3g and the iPad i got her for her birthday, three years ago, has been turned on exactly 5 times. That's the everyday user...and you want her to automate a home?
      - moron4hire 11y ago
        Working a help desk you don't really see the every day user, you see the subset of every day users who had problems. And frankly, when I call help-desks, I play dumb, because it's easier then convincing them that yes, I did check that it was plugged in, yes, I did power cycle. Your mother's lack of using her iPad is not an indication of her inability to figure out things outside of her wheelhouse, it's the lack of compelling use case for the iPad for certain people. Home automation also lacks a compelling use case. But security does not. The reason securing consumer networks is so hard is not because "users are lusers", it's because security professionals have no idea about UX, UX professionals have no idea about security, and they both treat each other like shit.
- mkj 11y ago
  Ah, but service discovery is easy on the internet and hard on LANs!
  - wkz 11y ago
    What do you mean? On a LAN you can simply use zeroconf with multicast DNS to do service discovery, like how Apple does with Airplay. Or am I missing some requirement?
    - mkj 11y ago
      Straight TCP connect() support (to an internet hostname) is much more common in embedded network stacks than a zeroconf implementation.
      - dangerlibrary 11y ago
        Sounds like an opportunity.
    - creeble 11y ago
      mDNS works for poo on many, many (non-Apple) routers and APs in the real world. It is a sad state of affairs.
      - wkz 11y ago
        Interesting, I have never had any issues with it. One of the nice things about mDNS is that the only co-operation you need from your gateway is that it forwards multicast correctly which you can usually expect the switch silicon to do. Are you saying that there are many gateways/APs that do not forward multicast according to spec? Or are you using something like IGMP? In that case I agree, there are alot of devices that won't play ball since they don't send JOINs or have other peculiarities.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  The final quote supports what you say: “We can open the garage door from anywhere in the world,” she says. “I’m not sure why we’d need to do that.” But I think there is also some ambivalence about even having the garage door connected there. I think lots of people would pay a little extra for a garage door that they can check from their phone, but it is something that has to be really easy to install and use, and the number of people who would pay is going to drop off quickly as the price goes up.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Indeed. Home automation has been a solution looking for a problem for decades. Some people find it a fun toy, but it's just not a labour saving invention - there isn't enough labour spent in the first place to be worth saving. We spend a few seconds each day with light switches and maybe up to a minute with garage doors - less if you already have a simple door remote. Heating is more worthwhile to improve, but harder.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  Yes, I have rejected most major commercial offerings out of hand because they usually have/require some connection to an internet server. I have no desire to include that sort of vulnerability/weak link.
  - gregmac 11y ago
    To me, it's just as big a deal that you're now at the whim of the provider. Your equipment can suddenly stop working if: * They go out of business or decide to drop the product line * Their servers go down (do you know if they're running a HA config, or merely a single server?) * They decide to make v2 of the product and stop updating/supporting v1 On top of this, your home internet connection can and will go down. Depending on what exactly you're doing this may or may not be a big deal: for example, not being able to remotely see your garage door status probably isn't important. Not having your motion sensing lights or timed schedules work, however, would be a pain. There are many products from startups that are hurting themselves because of this. I, like many geeks, love this kind of stuff, but like you, I won't purchase or make my house rely on anything that has these risks, and I steer friends and family away from these products as well. Developers: At least make your internet connection optional and allow the gear work without it. Even better, open source your server software: we can see how secure it is, plus if you go out of business, I can at least run it myself.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      >Your equipment can suddenly stop working if... That's part of what makes it a weak link! >your home internet connection can and will go down Yup
    - geographomics 11y ago
      I had exactly that problem with a digital photo frame. Company went out of business a few months after purchase, leaving no way to update the displayed photos (at least, not without hacking the device) as they were all pulled from a remote server that no longer existed.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
- criddell 11y ago
  Sometimes I feel a little bit like Adama in Battlestar Galactica with my distrust of IOT devices. If the internet disappears lots and lots of things become useless. Something becoming less useful I can take. But when the internet goes out and I suddenly can't access the camera feed for my home security system (Arlo) on the same LAN, it feels like something is incorrectly designed. The reality though is that an event that took out the internet would take out lots of other stuff. Your $50000 car would suddenly have a lifespan of hours if you can't get fuel anymore. Grocery stores would empty out. All the slack in the system has been JIT'd out for the sake of a fraction of a percent more profit. It makes me a little nervous.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    > The reality though is that an event that took out the internet would take out lots of other stuff. It doesn't even have to be as extreme as that. If the device depends on "the cloud" (e.g. some company's servers), your device is useless once those servers are shut down. A good example of this actually happening is Zeo, they made a sleep monitoring device that was much more capable than all the fitbit garbage we're left with. Unfortunately they went out of business, their servers were shutdown, and their devices became useless to anyone who couldn't do a fair amount of hacking. Companies going out of business or discontinuing products is a common occurrence. Products should be designed to be tolerant to those failures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeo,_Inc.#Out_of_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeo,_Inc.#Out_of_business
    - breischl 11y ago
      Or even just temporary problems with your ISP or local internet. Somebody took out a local connection with a backhoe? There go your TV/movies, Xbox One, VOIP phone, security cameras (if you've got the GP's system), etc.
- anotherevan 11y ago
  Agreed. I'm far more interested in the intranet of things than the internet of things.
MrQuincle 11y ago
That's definitely the case. However, these things are remarkably hard to explain to journalists. Our open source power outlet, the Crownstone, has nice conversion rates when people find us on Kickstarter. It is a problem though that journalists don't want to hear a story about all the things you can do with kits like that. They want single use cases. They want simple stories to tell. The end user does not want that! They like to get more product for their money. I think the app market concept could only be invented by business savvy tech people... It's our task to encourage kits and kit makers to keep doing what they are doing! Back them up! :-)
irickt 11y ago
Companies mentioned in the article: http://littlebits.cc/ http://littlebits.cc/ https://www.particle.io/ https://www.particle.io/
DarkTree 11y ago
"Jeremy Blum's home-automation system, which he calls Jarvis, can control lights, curtains and music and can answer questions about anything using a phone, voice commands or this command center." Implementations like this kind of scare me. It is certainly cool to be 'able' to automate these things, but should we? Are we going to use technology to make our lives lazier, or better? No, they aren't mutually-exclusive, but I can't help but think that making it so you don't have to leave your couch in order to turn off the lights is a movement toward a worse lifestyle. Your health has a much larger contribution to your standard of living than convenience, and to me, this seems like trading off one for the other (in a subtle way). However, maybe I will eventually be convinced of the net benefits. Am I approaching this wrong?
- i_cant_speel 11y ago
  People can still choose to get enough exercise to be healthy even with all these convenient options. When I go to the gym in the morning, I'm exhausted and I would gladly choose not to get up to turn off the lights if I didn't have to. This doesn't take away people's option to live a healthy lifestyle and I don't see this as a valid reason to be against automation.
- i_cant_speel 11y ago
  People can still choose to get enough exercise to be healthy even with all these convenient options. When I go to the gym in the morning, I'm exhausted and I would gladly choose not to get up to turn off the lights if I didn't have to. This doesn't take away people's option to live a healthy lifestyle and I don't see this as a valid reason to be against automation.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I don't see how this affect one's exercise regimen in any way. The use case probably isn't not getting off the couch to turn off the light, but voicing the command as you leave the room. In case of light, it's just (aiming at) more seamless experience. For some reason many people have this picture of technology bringing forth the Wall-E world. Consider however the following points: - People hate that vision with passion, which pretty much guarantees it won't come to pass any time soon. - "Normals" today are absolutely obsessed with fitness. Between spamming everyone with Endomondo updates on Facebook and testing a new toy-pedometer-watch, the primary use of Javris-like system in general population will probably be dieting and exercise. - Convenience doesn't have to lead to laziness. It can enable one to do more, faster and better. In a way, one could argue 200 years ago that the invention of electric washing machine will turn people lazy and fat. Ultimately, it will be up to us how much we eat and move. As our civilization goes forward, those things will be more and more disconnected from the limitations of reality. We can either learn to stay fit with computers, or give up on future entirely right now and go back to building things by hand. EDIT: I'll also share a short anecdote. 8 years ago, I built myself a voice-controlled system for changing music (Star Trek: TNG style, with computer voice reacting to commands). Basically a microphone soldered together from parts and hung on a wardrobe, + some Microsoft Speech API based software I wrote for off-line command recognition and control over a WinAMP instance. It wasn't that hard to get it working even though the music was on the loudspeakers, with quite high a volume setting. I could use it to change the music from my bed, or chair, or anywhere in the room. Did it made me exercise less? No. I actually did it to stop myself turning the computer screen on to change music while doing math exercises for maturity exam. It helped me to keep focused, because the task suddenly didn't require to do a context switch. Since that experience, it's how I see home automation - as a way to reduce context switching and to streamline some chores, not to rob you of meaningful activities.

46 points by fawce 11y ago

I am pretty sure that people actually want network connected hardware instead of Internet-connected hardware. And perhaps they also want a way to access their hardware in their home network in a secure and private way.

StavrosK 11y ago
Exactly. I've been thinking about a way to do this (it's pretty much just devices generating ECC keys and exchanging them with each other while pairing, along with AES keys). Afterwards, communicating through MQTT is easy, even if the server is public. Maybe I should write up an initial version in Python, although it wouldn't run on embedded devices. It would at least be a good prototype.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  It would run on a Pi/BBB.
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    It would, that's partly why I started it yesterday. So far, I'm thinking about what features it should support, but it will be at https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone.
- hwstar 11y ago
  MQTT is great on an internal LAN for controlling small devices based on say the ESP8266, but I wouldn't trust it over the public Internet unless it is VPN'd. What's needed is a new protocol you can use between your phone or tablet which is websockets-based and can use HTTPS to talk to either node.js or something similar. This protocol could also convey graphing data and GUI building blocks to your phone or tablet. BTW: I have several ESP8266 building blocks on my Github site https://github.com/hwstar https://github.com/hwstar with are home automation related. These include AC control, AC energy measurement, and DC voltage and current measurement. I'm not a GUI/android/ios programmer, but would like to work on open source software with someone who is.
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    Why websockets and HTTPS? That's way too heavy for embedded devices, and why do you care what the transport is if the messages themselves are encrypted and authenticated? If you want to take a look at what I'm building, I'll publish it at https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone https://github.com/skorokithakis/stringphone when I have some code.
    - hwstar 11y ago
      You are correct. If the transport is secure, then the protocol doesn't matter. I just think that a central controller model could use a protocol which is more suited to keeping the code on the mobile device as simple as possible. If you just want to send MQTT commands to nodes without a central controller, then what you propose makes sense.
      - StavrosK 11y ago
        The problem is that TLS is far from "as simple as possible", and you need TLS on the device in order to have encrypted communications just device-to-server. In my opinion, device-to-device encryption is much better, and you don't need all the overhead of TLS. I've actually finished a first draft of the prototype and am looking for people to kick the tires and discuss it. Would you be interested?
        hwstar 11y ago
        If you make it open to everyone, I'll take a look. Post the code on Github and document what it does in the README.md file.
        StavrosK 11y ago
        Done.
        hwstar 11y ago
bardworx 11y ago
I agree with you but the regular consumer doesn't know the difference between LAN or WAN, nor what a VPN or SSH are. They just want it to work, and that's difficult to achieve unless you are proficient with basic networking concepts. For the tinkerer or early adapter, there are steps in the right direction. For the "everyday" person, this tech is still a few years away, in my opinion.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Maybe our continued repetition that "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference..." is why "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference".
  - bardworx 11y ago
    > Maybe our continued repetition that "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference..." is why "the regular consumer doesn't know the difference". I've worked helpdesk for users and being exposed to regular, everyday, computer users I can attest that the consumer doesn't know the difference because they don't care enough to learn. One of my first questions was: "Did you try pressing the power button?" I would get silence....then a quick "Thank You" ... then a dead line. Another anecdote: My mother is a programmer (DB2, Cobol, SQL) for a financial institution. She is of middle class in NYC and educated. She still uses an iPhone 3g and the iPad i got her for her birthday, three years ago, has been turned on exactly 5 times. That's the everyday user...and you want her to automate a home?
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      Working a help desk you don't really see the every day user, you see the subset of every day users who had problems. And frankly, when I call help-desks, I play dumb, because it's easier then convincing them that yes, I did check that it was plugged in, yes, I did power cycle. Your mother's lack of using her iPad is not an indication of her inability to figure out things outside of her wheelhouse, it's the lack of compelling use case for the iPad for certain people. Home automation also lacks a compelling use case. But security does not. The reason securing consumer networks is so hard is not because "users are lusers", it's because security professionals have no idea about UX, UX professionals have no idea about security, and they both treat each other like shit.
mkj 11y ago
Ah, but service discovery is easy on the internet and hard on LANs!
- wkz 11y ago
  What do you mean? On a LAN you can simply use zeroconf with multicast DNS to do service discovery, like how Apple does with Airplay. Or am I missing some requirement?
  - mkj 11y ago
    Straight TCP connect() support (to an internet hostname) is much more common in embedded network stacks than a zeroconf implementation.
    - dangerlibrary 11y ago
      Sounds like an opportunity.
  - creeble 11y ago
    mDNS works for poo on many, many (non-Apple) routers and APs in the real world. It is a sad state of affairs.
    - wkz 11y ago
      Interesting, I have never had any issues with it. One of the nice things about mDNS is that the only co-operation you need from your gateway is that it forwards multicast correctly which you can usually expect the switch silicon to do. Are you saying that there are many gateways/APs that do not forward multicast according to spec? Or are you using something like IGMP? In that case I agree, there are alot of devices that won't play ball since they don't send JOINs or have other peculiarities.
maxerickson 11y ago
The final quote supports what you say: “We can open the garage door from anywhere in the world,” she says. “I’m not sure why we’d need to do that.” But I think there is also some ambivalence about even having the garage door connected there. I think lots of people would pay a little extra for a garage door that they can check from their phone, but it is something that has to be really easy to install and use, and the number of people who would pay is going to drop off quickly as the price goes up.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Indeed. Home automation has been a solution looking for a problem for decades. Some people find it a fun toy, but it's just not a labour saving invention - there isn't enough labour spent in the first place to be worth saving. We spend a few seconds each day with light switches and maybe up to a minute with garage doors - less if you already have a simple door remote. Heating is more worthwhile to improve, but harder.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
Yes, I have rejected most major commercial offerings out of hand because they usually have/require some connection to an internet server. I have no desire to include that sort of vulnerability/weak link.
- gregmac 11y ago
  To me, it's just as big a deal that you're now at the whim of the provider. Your equipment can suddenly stop working if: * They go out of business or decide to drop the product line * Their servers go down (do you know if they're running a HA config, or merely a single server?) * They decide to make v2 of the product and stop updating/supporting v1 On top of this, your home internet connection can and will go down. Depending on what exactly you're doing this may or may not be a big deal: for example, not being able to remotely see your garage door status probably isn't important. Not having your motion sensing lights or timed schedules work, however, would be a pain. There are many products from startups that are hurting themselves because of this. I, like many geeks, love this kind of stuff, but like you, I won't purchase or make my house rely on anything that has these risks, and I steer friends and family away from these products as well. Developers: At least make your internet connection optional and allow the gear work without it. Even better, open source your server software: we can see how secure it is, plus if you go out of business, I can at least run it myself.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >Your equipment can suddenly stop working if... That's part of what makes it a weak link! >your home internet connection can and will go down Yup
  - geographomics 11y ago
    I had exactly that problem with a digital photo frame. Company went out of business a few months after purchase, leaving no way to update the displayed photos (at least, not without hacking the device) as they were all pulled from a remote server that no longer existed.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
criddell 11y ago
Sometimes I feel a little bit like Adama in Battlestar Galactica with my distrust of IOT devices. If the internet disappears lots and lots of things become useless. Something becoming less useful I can take. But when the internet goes out and I suddenly can't access the camera feed for my home security system (Arlo) on the same LAN, it feels like something is incorrectly designed. The reality though is that an event that took out the internet would take out lots of other stuff. Your $50000 car would suddenly have a lifespan of hours if you can't get fuel anymore. Grocery stores would empty out. All the slack in the system has been JIT'd out for the sake of a fraction of a percent more profit. It makes me a little nervous.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gherkin0 11y ago
  > The reality though is that an event that took out the internet would take out lots of other stuff. It doesn't even have to be as extreme as that. If the device depends on "the cloud" (e.g. some company's servers), your device is useless once those servers are shut down. A good example of this actually happening is Zeo, they made a sleep monitoring device that was much more capable than all the fitbit garbage we're left with. Unfortunately they went out of business, their servers were shutdown, and their devices became useless to anyone who couldn't do a fair amount of hacking. Companies going out of business or discontinuing products is a common occurrence. Products should be designed to be tolerant to those failures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeo,_Inc.#Out_of_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeo,_Inc.#Out_of_business
  - breischl 11y ago
    Or even just temporary problems with your ISP or local internet. Somebody took out a local connection with a backhoe? There go your TV/movies, Xbox One, VOIP phone, security cameras (if you've got the GP's system), etc.
anotherevan 11y ago
Agreed. I'm far more interested in the intranet of things than the internet of things.

MrQuincle 11y ago

That's definitely the case. However, these things are remarkably hard to explain to journalists. Our open source power outlet, the Crownstone, has nice conversion rates when people find us on Kickstarter. It is a problem though that journalists don't want to hear a story about all the things you can do with kits like that. They want single use cases. They want simple stories to tell. The end user does not want that! They like to get more product for their money. I think the app market concept could only be invented by business savvy tech people... It's our task to encourage kits and kit makers to keep doing what they are doing! Back them up! :-)

irickt 11y ago

Companies mentioned in the article: http://littlebits.cc/ http://littlebits.cc/ https://www.particle.io/ https://www.particle.io/

DarkTree 11y ago

"Jeremy Blum's home-automation system, which he calls Jarvis, can control lights, curtains and music and can answer questions about anything using a phone, voice commands or this command center." Implementations like this kind of scare me. It is certainly cool to be 'able' to automate these things, but should we? Are we going to use technology to make our lives lazier, or better? No, they aren't mutually-exclusive, but I can't help but think that making it so you don't have to leave your couch in order to turn off the lights is a movement toward a worse lifestyle. Your health has a much larger contribution to your standard of living than convenience, and to me, this seems like trading off one for the other (in a subtle way). However, maybe I will eventually be convinced of the net benefits. Am I approaching this wrong?

i_cant_speel 11y ago
People can still choose to get enough exercise to be healthy even with all these convenient options. When I go to the gym in the morning, I'm exhausted and I would gladly choose not to get up to turn off the lights if I didn't have to. This doesn't take away people's option to live a healthy lifestyle and I don't see this as a valid reason to be against automation.
i_cant_speel 11y ago
People can still choose to get enough exercise to be healthy even with all these convenient options. When I go to the gym in the morning, I'm exhausted and I would gladly choose not to get up to turn off the lights if I didn't have to. This doesn't take away people's option to live a healthy lifestyle and I don't see this as a valid reason to be against automation.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I don't see how this affect one's exercise regimen in any way. The use case probably isn't not getting off the couch to turn off the light, but voicing the command as you leave the room. In case of light, it's just (aiming at) more seamless experience. For some reason many people have this picture of technology bringing forth the Wall-E world. Consider however the following points: - People hate that vision with passion, which pretty much guarantees it won't come to pass any time soon. - "Normals" today are absolutely obsessed with fitness. Between spamming everyone with Endomondo updates on Facebook and testing a new toy-pedometer-watch, the primary use of Javris-like system in general population will probably be dieting and exercise. - Convenience doesn't have to lead to laziness. It can enable one to do more, faster and better. In a way, one could argue 200 years ago that the invention of electric washing machine will turn people lazy and fat. Ultimately, it will be up to us how much we eat and move. As our civilization goes forward, those things will be more and more disconnected from the limitations of reality. We can either learn to stay fit with computers, or give up on future entirely right now and go back to building things by hand. EDIT: I'll also share a short anecdote. 8 years ago, I built myself a voice-controlled system for changing music (Star Trek: TNG style, with computer voice reacting to commands). Basically a microphone soldered together from parts and hung on a wardrobe, + some Microsoft Speech API based software I wrote for off-line command recognition and control over a WinAMP instance. It wasn't that hard to get it working even though the music was on the loudspeakers, with quite high a volume setting. I could use it to change the music from my bed, or chair, or anywhere in the room. Did it made me exercise less? No. I actually did it to stop myself turning the computer screen on to change music while doing math exercises for maturity exam. It helped me to keep focused, because the task suddenly didn't require to do a context switch. Since that experience, it's how I see home automation - as a way to reduce context switching and to streamline some chores, not to rob you of meaningful activities.